A former combat medic running for Congress lied under oath as a defense witness for Omar Abdel Rahman aka “the Blind Sheikh,” who incited the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, a watchdog group claims.
Adam Hamawy, 56, an Egyptian-born physician and former Army trauma surgeon, is the leading candidate in Tuesday’s primary for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, backed by streamer Hasan Piker and left-wing senator Bernie Sanders.
But his association with Abdel Rahman has come back to haunt him. At the terrorist’s 1995 trial for inciting the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six, Hamawy was a witness for his defense.
He had met Abdel Rahman in 1991 in New Jersey and shared a ride with him to a conference in Detroit that year, named “Towards a Global Islamic Economy,” according to a court transcript.
When asked about the trip during the trial, Hamawy — who has never been accused of wrongdoing in relation to the bombing — testified that the subject of the conference was economics of the Middle East. When asked if he’d ever heard Abdel Rahman speak about jihad against America, he replied: “No, not against America,” according to the transcript obtained by The Post.
However, when shown a transcript of the speech and further prompted during questioning by a federal prosecutor, he then admitted Abdel Rahman had spoken about jihad — an Arabic term often interpreted as Holy War — but claimed it was taken out of context and he didn’t mean jihad “in specific.”
However, in a translation from the text of Abdel-Rahman’s speech at the First Annual Conference of the Islamic Charity Project seen by The Post, he makes a number of inciteful statements. The speech was entitled “The Best Way of Supporting Jihad,” and included lines such as: “We must preserve our land and defend it through jihad in the path of Allah.”
In a video of the conference seen by The Post, Abdel Rahman also tells attendees it would be against Islam to negotiate with “the enemy” — Israel — and “reconciliation, sitting down or negotiations — Islam does not approve of any of it.”
“How can a call for peace be made in Afghanistan, for example, after the fall of 20,000 martyrs?” he continued.
Abdel-Rahman also called on his followers to target Hosni Mubarak, the then-president of Egypt.
“[Ex-president Anwar] Sadat surrendered what Israel wanted in the Camp David treaty [of 1978], and the third treacherous traitor [Mubarak] comes to be the loyal dog of America. And gives everything and leads the caravan of treason to give everything to Israel and, behind it, America.”
In court in 1995, a lawyer for the US showed Hamawy a transcript and asked: “Does that refresh your recollection whether he talked about jihad for the sake of God and conquering the land of the infidels?”
Hamawy initially said the statement was being taken out of context, but then admitted, “It was a struggle in the sake of God, yes. It was a jihad.”
Hamawy also admitted “he [Abdel Rahman] basically, you know, was very critical, of America’s foreign policy against Muslims in general, especially during the Gulf War,” according to the trial transcripts. Hamawy was never charged with perjury or faced other repercussions over his testimony.
“I think the voters of New Jersey have a right to know why Dr. Hamawy felt so strongly in defending a violent jihadist leader — the Blind Sheikh — that he repeatedly lied under oath in the 1995 terrorist trial. Dr. Hamamy’s silence until now suggests he has no qualms about his testimony,” said Steven Emerson, founder and executive director of
the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a Washington, DC-based think tank that studies extremism.
A spokesperson for Egpyt-born Hamawy pointed to his long career of service in the US military and added, of Abdel Rahman: “At the time, the man in question was one of very few religious figures in what was then a very small Muslim community in New Jersey … Dr. Hamawy condemns that man’s violent rhetoric and actions, and all violence, hatred, and terrorism — and he will always. Dr. Hamawy had no contact with this person after they were arrested.”
His spokespeople also denied that he tried to mislead prosecutors during the trial. One of those prosecutors, Andrew C. McCarthy, recently wrote: “[Hamawy’s] testimony did more to bolster the prosecution’s proof of a jihadist terrorism conspiracy against the United States than to help the accused,” in the National Review.
Hamawy, a plastic surgeon, recently completed volunteer work as a doctor in Gaza, Haiti and Sudan.
He also served in the Army Medical Corps during the Iraq war and helped to save the life of former Army pilot and US Senator Tammy Duckworth, after her helicopter was shot down in November 2004.
Hamawy recently called for Israel to do away with its Iron Dome, the anti-missile system that catches rockets midair before they can hit targets.
“It’s like giving a bully body armor to go bully people some more,” Hamawy told Piker on his “The HasanAbi Broadcast” last month. “We need to be able to have them feel the effects of war, and then they’ll stop.”
Hamawy is seeking to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman in the Congressional race.
